Thursday, 15 March 2018

Natalie Lamb and Leadership Styles

It is important to know what your leadership style is so you
know what areas you need development in. However, these tests should be taken
with a pinch of salt, as every individual is different and, for example, introverted
people make excellent leaders as well as extroverted people. Also many of the
theories below associate good leadership with specific traits but leadership is
not an innate or static process, your traits and your leadership style will
change over time.

Authentic leaders have been found to do/be the following (Northouse, 2010):

Understand their values and their behaviour reflects their values

Exhibit passion about their goals

Connect with other people and build strong relationships

Have enough self-discipline to persevere and be consistent

Be compassionate

The below questionnaires can help you to reflect on yourself
and assess what areas need development to become an authentic leader. You can
also reflect, without the questionnaires, on what your values, both as a person
and as a leader, are. For example, three values that are of importance to me
are: creativity, determination and learning.

What is important for you? What are your most cherished memories? What about them makes them important? What values can you associate with those moments?

What frustrates you? What makes you upset? Remember situations in which you failed? How did they make you feel? What negative values can you think of in relation to those moments?

What are the moments when you took a leap of faith or when you trusted your intuition? What triggered you to have the courage to listen to your instinct? Can you connect this to any values?

The TREO (Team Role Experience and Orientation)
is a test that identifies what your usual role in a team,
identifying your strengths and weaknesses. It can be found in the appendix of Mathieu
et al. (2015)’s work. The test identifies the following roles that are
necessary in a team:

Organiser-
structures what team is doing, keeps track of accomplishments, keeps track of
progression, goals and timelines

Doer- willingly takes on work, completes work, meets deadlines

Challenger- pushes team to explore all aspects of a situation, often asks
“why”, comfortable debating and critiquing

Innovator- generates new and creative ideas, strategies, and approaches
for how the team can handle various situations and challenges

Team Builder- helps establish norms, supports decisions, and maintains a
positive work atmosphere within the team

Connector- helps bridge and connect the team with others, ensuring a good
working relationship

My Score

Organiser 38%

Doer 88%

Challenger 13%

Innovator 38%

Team Builder 25%

Connector 75%

Belbin Theory

Belbin has
created a theory around team roles, that associates team roles with individual
“orientation”. A free version of this test can be found at https://testyourself.psychtests.com/testid/3113.
Individuals can be action/task-oriented, people/relationships
oriented and thought-oriented. The orientations have the following characteristics:

Strengths- able to work with your team to resolve problems, good at setting team goals

Potential Strengths- satisfactory interpersonal skills, sometimes able to resolve conflict with teammates, able to communicate with others during teamwork with relative ease, able to manage some of the different tasks, goals and other aspects of teamwork

Limitations- are not very skilled at planning and coordinating with teammates, seem to prefer individual work over teamwork

Northouse, P.G.,2010. Leadership: Theory and Practice (5th
Ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. (No accessible link, this book
can be found both at the Diamond and the IC for Sheffield Students).